


Silenced

by abundantlyqueer



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Family, Gen, Music
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-14
Updated: 2011-05-14
Packaged: 2017-10-19 09:18:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 498
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/199289
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/abundantlyqueer/pseuds/abundantlyqueer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I left this prompt on <b>make me a monday</b> over at lj community <b>sherlockbbc</b>: Sherlock, of course, plays the violin; Mycroft plays the piano. But they haven't played together since their mother died.</p><p>Then lj user <b>theotherwillow</b> commented that she'd been brain-vidding Sherlock and Mycroft playing Corelli's La Folia, and I listened to that, and then filled my own prompt.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Silenced

She never understood either of them, or the strange, discomforted yet necessary relationship between them, but in her they both found rest and a place where they could almost meet in peace.

The piano stood at the far end of the formal dining room: an entirely inappropriate place for it, according to every law of house arrangement. The sweep of French windows behind it, with a view of the enclosed garden and the open meadow beyond, however, was a bliss worth any amount of decorators’ dismay and dinner guests’ surprise. Mycroft could spend an entire summer’s afternoon sitting on the velvet-seated bench, playing scales and arpeggios and pieces he had mastered and ones he was still coming to terms with. The sun would circle from his right to his left, the light turning thick and gold as day became evening.

And sometimes, some rare and never to be relied upon times, Sherlock would come quietly in with his violin already on his shoulder and his bow cutting through the air with a soft swish. He’d carve the first trilling note from the violin’s strings while he was still on the far side of the room. He’d approach as he played, but stop some fifteen or twenty feet from the piano, out of Mycroft’s line of sight. Mycroft would refrain from showing by look or gesture or even modulation of his playing that he was aware of Sherlock’s presence. The violin’s notes would drop into the interstices of the piano’s, threading above and below until both instruments were weaving a single complex braid.

At the end of the piece, Mycroft would turn the pages of his music as if selecting something else to play, but Sherlock would come closer and announce with autocratic hauteur something like, _not The Spring, it sounds like a fat pony in a gymkhana race … knock out La Folia, and try not to trample all over me, thanks_.

Mycroft would heave a sigh of long-suffering patience, and Sherlock would move nearer, near enough to lean one bony hip into the curve of the piano, so he could watch critically as Mycroft’s hands took their place above the keys. There would be a single moment when Mycroft would raise his eyes and Sherlock would accept his gaze, the silence in the room balanced on the look between them. Then Sherlock’s eyelids would drop slightly, and Mycroft’s fingers would stroke the first chord from the keys, and Sherlock would sway the first note from the violin.

And Violet Holmes, walking down the back hallway on her way out to the garden, would stop in the open doorway to listen to them. She would look across the expanse of the room, and marvel at the two exquisite young men as they shaped the music with each rise and fall of a shoulder, each tilt of a head, each briefly conferring flick of a glance. And she would think to herself, always, _I’m so glad they have each other_.


End file.
